I have a client that is trying to purchase a forum with 11 million post, 110,000 users and 2,000 concurrent users online and they're asking me what kind of hosting they would need. I told them I would ask you guys since I know we have some big board owners at Admin Talk. So.. thoughts? They are looking at hosting with rackspace if that help. Thanks
IMO, managed colocation. Some may not agree because its a bit old school, but I like it. The reason I like it is I have total control over the hardware and software. Its not cheap, as you have to buy the server you spec out, but it makes it so you can upgrade hardware anytime to meet your needs. Without seeing specs, my guess is you would need 2 servers, one for php, images and html and one for database.
I myself would go with a decent dedicated server. Since they are your client, I would go without managed hosting. Then you could maybe do as @Joeychgo suggest and split up the site between a couple folders. I have in the past used sub domains for things like that. Always worked well for me. images.whatevername.com whatevername.com files.whatevername.com I do not know much about rackspace, but yeah I would just go with a dedicated server in their budget @Brandon
I would go dedicated. I'd also make sure you had plenty of RAM. 32 gigs minimum. With that many users online and the amount of posts it must get you'll need some serious horsepower. It actually wouldn't hurt to have 2 or 3 servers with 1 as site server, 1 as database server and one for static content.
1 Dedicated Server w/12-16Gigs of RAM and at least one SSD, 1 SSD for mySQL and if possible another SSD for www-data, should be enough. I am making this assumption since XF is proven to be lighter than vB. By saying 2000 concurrent users do you mean based on the cookie timeout or real-time? If it's the latter then you'll need more horsepower, in this case, I would suggest splitting mySQL into another server.
